Girlbosses and Brewmasters: Safra Catz and The Santo Domingo Family

Zero Sum Empire

Billionaires in the News: American Billionaires as a group surpass $1 Trillion in increased wealth during the pandemic. Elon Musk gets COVID, launches manned spacecraft, and makes a fool of himself on Twitter again. Sheldon Solow, New York real estate billionaire and “art collector,” has died. Billionaire #1: Safra Catz, 9/10 on the DKMALI (19:55) Safra Catz is the current co-CEO or Oracle. Oracle makes enterprise software and database projects, and was instrumental in building the communication infrastructure necessary for the rise of the US government surveillance apparatuses (I think I said CIA when I meant to say NSA a couple times). She has been helping steer the Oracle project for decades. She loves Trump and thinks he’s smart. She’s good pals with Sheldon Adelson. Much like Adelson, it appears she is an Israeli nationalist. You go, #girlboss! Billionaire #2: Familia Santo Domingo, 4/10 on the DKMALI (47:20) The Santo Domingo family’s fortune is rooted in the beer business, although it has become a sprawling cosmopolitan network of investments. This is a different kind of billionaire family than we’re used to. This is the sort of family that seems like it would feel more at home in the 1920s than the 2020s, because everyone is described as a “socialite” and half of them are European royalty. Downright Hapsburgian. Joe tells us a lot about how the beer industry is controlled by a duopoly, and why that’s the reason you can’t get that great microbrew you tried on vacation. Links: Solow Foundation: http://www.solowfoundation.org/hours-of-operation/ CIA Project Oracle: https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238 Larry Ellison, NSA supplier: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/guy-who-provides-nsa-databases-loves-nsa-surveillance/312223/ Ellison NYT editorial: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/31/opinion/IHT-a-single-national-security-database.html Catz at Israeli ambassador’s house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiMYts63kU Leigh Stein on #girlbossing: https://gen.medium.com/the-end-of-the-girlboss-is-nigh-4591dec34ed8 Oracle's Social Enabled Policing brochure: http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/public-sector/social-enabled-policing-wp-2541916.pdf Beer duopoly: https://slate.com/business/2020/07/break-up-big-beer.html